America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2007
Children of at Least One Foreign-Born Parent
The foreign-born population of the United States has grown since 1970.21 This increase in the past generation has largely been due to immigration from Latin America and Asia, and represents an increase in the diversity of language and cultural backgrounds of children growing up in the United States.22 As a result of language and cultural barriers confronting children and their parents, children with foreign-born parents may need additional resources both at school and at home.23
Indicator FAM4: Percentage of children ages 0–17 by nativity of child and parents, selected years 1994–2006
NOTE: Includes all children ages 0–17 in households. Children living in households with no parents present are not shown in this figure, but are included in the bases for the percentages. Native parents means that all of the parents that the child lives with are native born, while foreign-born means that one or both of the child's parents are foreign-born. Anyone with U.S. citizenship at birth is considered native, which includes people born in the United States or in U.S. outlying areas and people born abroad with at least one American parent. Foreign-born children with native parents are included in the native children with native parents category.
SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau. Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement.
- In 2006, 17 percent of children were native children with at least one foreign-born parent, and 4 percent were foreign-born children with at least one foreign-born parent. Overall, the percentage of all children living in the U.S. with at least one parent who was foreign born rose from 15 percent in 1994 to 21 percent in 2006.
- In 2006, 39 percent of foreign-born children with at least one foreign-born parent, 33 percent of native children with at least one foreign-born parent, and 10 percent of native children with native parents had a parent with less than a high school diploma or equivalent credential.
- In 2006, foreign-born children with foreign-born parents were more likely than native children with foreign-born parents to live below the poverty level, 30 and 20 percent, respectively.
- Regardless of their own nativity status, children with at least one foreign-born parent more often lived in a household with two parents present than did children with no foreign-born parents. In 2006, 82 percent of native children with at least one foreign-born parent lived with two parents, compared with 68 percent of children with native parents.
21 Schmidley, A.D. (2001). Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 2000. Current Population Reports (P23-206), U.S. Census Bureau. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-206.pdf.
22 Schmidley, A.D. (2003). The Foreign-Born Population in the United States: March 2002, Current Population Reports (P20-539). Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20-539.pdf.
23 Gibson, C.J. and Lennon, E. (1999). Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850-1990, Population Division Working Paper No. 29. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau. Available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/twps0029.html.